A tape drive reads and/or writes data on a magnetic tape. Most tape drives use an internal data buffer. Tape of such a tape drive may be stopped when the buffer contains no data to be written or when the buffer is full. A tape drive provides sequential access storage. That is, a tape drive winds tape between reels to read any one particular section of data. As a result, some tape drives may have relatively slow average seek times. Despite these slow seek times, tape drives may stream data rather quickly.
Certain tape drives operate with a single fixed linear speed. Other tape drives have the capability to operate at different linear speeds. Some of these tape drives may implement algorithms that dynamically match tape speed to host data rate. If the data transfer rate becomes too slow and streaming is no longer possible, however, these tape drives decelerate and stop the tape, rewind it a short distance, position it back to the point at which streaming stopped and then resume operation.